The Art of Selling Online Courses

207 How I Built a $4M Course Business (Thanks to 1 YouTube Video)

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 207

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I'm delighted to have Jacques Hopkins back on the podcast for another fantastic conversation. 

Jacques is someone I genuinely respect in this space - not only has he built an incredibly successful piano course that's generated over $4 million in revenue, but he's also become one of the best teachers I know when it comes to helping other course creators succeed.

In this episode, we dive deep into the power of webinars and why Jacques believes they're still the gold standard for selling online courses, despite being challenging to create. We explore how one YouTube video he made eight years ago continues to drive half his revenue today, pulling in 500 views daily. Jacques shares his proven framework for what makes a webinar actually convert - including why his two-hour webinar outperforms shorter ones - and we have an honest discussion about the reality of creating consistent YouTube content. 

We also get into some controversial takes about which platforms actually work for course sales (spoiler: Instagram might be wasting your time) and why YouTube's longevity makes it unbeatable for course creators. Whether you're just starting out or looking to optimize your existing funnel, this conversation is packed with actionable insights from someone who's actually done it.

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🔗 https://pianoin21days.com

SPEAKER_00:

I have one video I made eight years ago that is by far the the video that gets the most views. About 3 million views. My business brought in over 4 million dollars. I would venture to say that that one video has brought in at least half of those tales, right? It's wild. Even today, it's 500 views per day. Which like isn't a crazy amount, but I made it eight years ago. If not gonna get that on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or whatever, the longevity is unbelievable. Because when you do it right, it works. I mean, plain and simple, when you do it right, it works. And so like, why do I even bother? Like, I'm just gonna sit back and sit collapse and collect the money from this video eight years ago.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello, and welcome to the Art Stelling Online Course. We are here to share winning strategies and secret acts to top performers in the online course industry. My name is John Antwerp, and today's guest is Jack Company. Now Jack is the creator of Piano in 21 Days, which is an online course that served over 10,000 students and generated over 4 million dollars in between. And we have had previous episodes where Jack could come on and talk about that in detail. So if you want to hear those, go to search factories podcasts. Now he also hosted the online course show and he helped creators build an ethical evergreen system to clarify offers, optimizing funnels, and publishing content that compounds. He draws in over a decade in the trenches into practical frameworks on that. I've been on that podcast as well, which is great. It came out just a couple of weeks ago from when we were recording this. So go and check out the online course show as well. Now, today we're gonna start by talking about webinars. And this is something that I'm a big fan of, but I don't teach as much, and I haven't done as many episodes about. So we're gonna see what comes up and how we're gonna Jack's approach to this is doing the episode today.

SPEAKER_00:

So, Jack, welcome to the show. What's up, John Ainsworth? What an honor to be on the podcast. Once again, the art of selling online courses. Big fan. Big fan. Thanks. I guess the online course show is probably taken already, though, huh? I mean, that's not taken too.

SPEAKER_01:

It's like, what can I buy? Can I get the online? No, can't have that.

SPEAKER_00:

What else? That's like when I when I when I went to uh got the idea for piano in 21 days, you know, the first idea was piano in 30 days, but that was taken. I was like, ah, okay, what's another cool number, right? Because I was thinking kind of like in a month, and then and then it's like, well, three weeks is cool too, right? 21 days to form a habit. You've heard that before, probably. But yeah, piano in 30 was uh 30 days was taken. I think I think mine's been more successful at this point. This was a that was a long time ago. Sorry, I know I'm getting a tangent already. John, it's an honor to be here. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01:

I went to buy at one point there was a TV show, I don't know if you remember it, called uh Pimp My Ride. And I decided I wanted to do uh Pimp My Funnel. And I went to buy PimpmyFunnel.com and I found that Russell Brunson had already bought it and set it up as a redirect to a landing page for something he was doing. And I was like, you bastard. So I had to buy pimpyourfunnel.com. And sometimes when I tell people that link, they're like pimp, that was pimpmyfunnel.com. No, no, don't go there.

SPEAKER_00:

I didn't, you know, I I knew you've told me about that funnel in your on probably on my podcast, and I didn't realize it was not even my either, right? Because that's that's brilliant, right? I definitely remember that show.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, so webinars, let's get into this. I am a massive fan of webinars. And when I first started this business, I thought that what I was gonna do was teach people how to build webinars and build webinars for people, and that was gonna be the approach. And I found a number of times that people wouldn't manage to build their webinar or they'd do a half-hour job with it. And I feel like with a webinar, you need to do a I think at least you need to do a good job with it. And it was easier for people to do a decent job with sales pages and email marketing. And so that's kind of why I went down that that approach. And I we still build them for clients, we still use them, they're still fantastically sex successful. I think they're probably um in a lot of ways the best funnel that you can have. It depends on the price point of what you're selling, what have you? What's been your experience with it? Because you teach people to build webinars as as part of the kind of the sales funnel. Have you found issues with this? And let's just start with that. Have you found is some of those same issues that I talked about when you've taught people to do this? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

Can I tell you how I got into webinars? Can we start there? Great backstory. So my first evergreen, and and when we're talking, you're saying webinars, I'm assuming you're talking like evergreen webinar, not live webinar, or are you talking about both? Well, both. We do both, yeah, for people. Yeah. Okay. So the first funnel that ever worked for me was an evergreen product launch formula funnel, right? You're you're familiar with what that like the pre-launch video content. You're you're hyping up the launch. And then um, for me, when I first launched it, I was I was hyping up the availability of the offer, and then the offer would go away. We've since switched that to just a discount, uh, and the and the full price offer is is available all the time. But it was 2016, I implemented that offer for for my piano course, piano in 21 days. I said offer, I meant um type of funnel and not a webinar. And a couple years later, I got this uh accountability partner. We would meet every every week. He had a course in a completely different niche. And um, it was actually the first person I ever coached, and and he started doing well. He he implemented the product launch formula funnel, and then he started learning about webinars, right? And you'll never guess how he learned about webinars. It was through Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson. Um, and and I I waited a long time to read that book because I didn't understand what that book was about. I read dot com secrets in 2016, uh, and that's when I first signed up for Click ClickFunnels. I don't use that anymore. But he read Expert Secrets and come to find out, that book could just be called How to How to Write a Webinar That Sells Your Online Course. I mean, that's literally what that book is about. So so he implemented a webinar, a funnel, and it did really well for him. And we're meeting every week, right? His business is doing even better than mine, even though I, you know, he started out, I was coaching him. And so I was like, all right, fine, I guess I gotta try this webinar thing, right? But I didn't want to like, you know, like when something's working, you don't and you and you think it could be even better, but you don't want to mess up what's already working, right? So instead of just like creating a webinar funnel, what I did was I created a webinar and then put it at the beginning of my already working funnel, right? And so for the way that I did it, it actually solved a really big problem in the funnel that I had, which was for the first seven days of the funnel, people didn't have the ability to buy from me. Right. And it was uh at the time the offer was three to five hundred dollars. Uh for a piano course, that is on the higher side. And so it for most people, it does take that amount of time, but there are, I mean, you know this, like sometimes people are just hot to try it. It's a small percentage of people, but sometimes people are just ready at the beginning. And so by injecting the webinar at the beginning of that funnel, it gave people the opportunity to buy for the first time. And so I kept my opt-in the same as my free workbook. They'd opt in on the on the on the thank you page. They could download the workbook. I uh there's a little video that says step one, download the workbook, but step two, check out my my workshop. And it's just an on-on-demand workshop. Uh, and so that's when people started buying right away because they could buy at the end of the webinar uh for the first couple of days of the funnel. So I know I'm not truly answering your question yet, but that's kind of my backstory. And so that actually improved overall conversions for my funnel. And I've been running basically the same webinar ever since uh for the past like six, seven years as part of my funnel. Okay. So then so it worked for my accountability partner aid, it worked for me. Then I started showing other people how to do it. And with webinars, you you mentioned this, they're not they're hard, uh, and they're it's not gonna work unless you do an amazing job with it, right? And so do you think that that's my that's my instinct with it?

SPEAKER_01:

I've never tried to do a bad job to see does it does it definitely not work? But I feel like it's gotta be good, otherwise, what's what's the point with that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so so this is what I always tell my clients is you know, there there are there are multiple formulas for webinars. The the gold standard is is Russell Brunson's perfect webinar, but but there are other there are other ones. And you know, in his in his approach, you've got like the Epiphany Bridge story and the three secrets, like and we can break that down if you want to, but ultimately, and I and I teach, you know, kind of that that main uh framework, but ultimately when I'm reviewing somebody's webinar, I'm not looking for do you have exactly three secrets, right? Did you, did you, do you have one internal one? Do you have one external one? Do you have one what's what's the other channel one uh or vehicle? Or like is your epiphany bridge story exactly five and a half minutes, right? I'm not looking for any of that. What I'm looking for is by the time I get to the offer, have you made me say yes to two things? The first one is can I do this? Can I do this? Right? Because if you haven't made me believe I can do this thing, then I'm never you're never gonna make the sale, right? So I, you know, I always bring it back to the piano example. A lot of people will start my webinar, they'll opt into my freebie, whatever, enter my funnel. They want to play piano, but they still don't know if they can do it, right? My friend Nate that I've talked about, my accountability partner, he taught people to grow and sell microgreens and make like six figure figures a year. Microgreens are these baby versions of plants that are like 40 times new more nutritious than the full-grown uh version. Chefs put them on garnishes, you can put them on smoothies. If you don't, by the time you get to the offer, if you don't believe that you can grow them and then sell them and actually make six six figures doing that, then then you're never gonna make the sale. So that's the first thing. We've got to convince them that they can do it, right? And secondly, we've got to convince them that this is the perfect way for them to be able to do it, right? Because it's one thing for me to convince them that they can learn piano with all these paradigm shifts, breaking down false beliefs. But if they take that, if they take that away, they take that new confidence away and then go get a weekly piano teacher, then I haven't done my full job. I've got to also convince them that I'm the right guy and my program is the perfect way for them to be able to do it. So ultimately, when I'm reviewing a webinar, I'm putting myself in the shoes of somebody viewing it. And am I getting a yes to those two questions? Right. And if I'm not, then I gotta figure out why and provide feedback to the client.

SPEAKER_01:

How do you find it in terms of do you find people struggle with doing that? Do you find people that are like, okay, do you want me to answer the question this time or do you want me to like go on another tangent? And I want at least three more tangents and then maybe kind of weave it in, you know, through a story. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

It's very challenging. This is the most difficult thing I ask people to do is to make a webinar. And that's why we try to break it down. Like, let's start with the offer first, right? Don't try to build your offer the same time you're building your webinar. Start with the offer, okay. Next, let's build out your list of false beliefs, your objections, right? What are all the possible objections somebody has to succeeding in your niche or to buying your course? Let's list them all out. You know, basically, let's pick like the top three and come up with shifts, uh, paradigm shifts around those three, right? So we just kind of take it a piece at a time. Your Epiphany Bridge story, that's really important because we want to position ourselves as the guide of their story, not the hero of their story, right? And that's where the Epiphany Bridge story comes in. And then you just kind of piece it, piece it all together. Um, but but almost every time people are like, man, that is just so much more work than I expected it to be. You know? So absolutely, it's very, very challenging. Um and that's one of the one of the one of the big things that we help our clients with is um is reviewing it. Like we we teach them how to do it, but it's extremely rare that somebody nails it on the first time. Extremely rare. And that's why we're you know, that's why I have a coaching program, is because me and my team will look and give feedback and we'll tell them when we think it's good enough. Um but yes, very, very challenging. Did I answer your question this time?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, definitely. Why do you think so? If it's so challenging to get them to do it, do you why do you still think it's worth sticking with that as the one? Is it because it's the one that's worked the best for you? Is it because you think, you know what, out of everything you could do, this is this is the one that you really should do? Is it, you know, because you've been teaching it for ages and you can't be asked to change?

SPEAKER_00:

Like what's the what's the reason, you know? Yeah, because when you do it right, it works. I mean, plain and simple, when you do it right, it works. And we've got to have some sort of selling mechanism. And people are gonna buy from people they trust that they spend some time with. And if you can get them to show up to the webinar, because that's half the battle too, if you can get them to show up and then you do a bang up job with the webinar, then they're gonna spend that time with you and you're gonna either gonna go through those paradigm shifts and they're gonna they're gonna have the confidence that I can do this and that that and then this program is the perfect way for me to do this. When done well, which is so hard to do, when done well, it can work amazingly well.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think the fact that you've got an hour with someone, you know, like an hour of like building rapport or 45 minutes or however long your you know your webinar is, right? Um building rapport, making the case for for your argument and doing it in an entertaining way that keeps them engaged and getting them to believe they can do it and getting them to believe that your approach is the right way and and is the one that's going to work best for them. All of that is like you don't have that on a sales page. Like you don't guaranteed have that in the webinar. They might drop out part way through, they might be kind of only half listening, what have you. But like if you do, it's like that's a lot of time with someone to like really make your point to really get that across. And I think that's a big part of the reason why it works. And I recommend it for people, particularly if they're selling something maybe above$300, definitely above$500. Yeah, we're mostly helping people to sell courses that are from$79 to$500. Like that's the majority of our clients, and a lot of them in uh hobby space, you know, learn piano, learn uh guitar, whatever, or spirituality, or learn a language, that kind of thing, where it isn't at tend to be as expensive. But we have clients where like they're selling something for two, three thousand dollars, and we're like, let's do a webinar, you know? 100%.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I'm I'm the same way. Like I would say most of my clients are above like the$300 price point point, which is kind of where I would draw the line. Like it's a little bit of a gray area, but you know, if you have a$79 course, don't do a webinar. It's overkill. But you also mentioned the one hour mark, and there's there's no hard and fast rule on the time, and that's that's one of the top questions I get is like, how long should it be? Well, as long as it needs to be and no longer, right? It actually what I've found is it's way harder. I mean, a webinar is hard in and of itself, but it's way harder to make an effective short webinar than an effective long webinar. Okay. My piano webinar is actually two hours and it works, so I don't try to shorten it, but I do wish it were shorter. Um, I've had the the most successful short webinar I've seen is like 35 minutes and that does really, really well. Um, but you know, d are do you know Spencer Russell? Have you had her him on the podcast? No, I don't think so. He's one of the most successful course graders I've ever come across. Uh he's uh he's been on my podcast probably three times. Uh he would be a fantastic guest for your podcast. Um he was a client of mine. When when he came to me a few years ago, he didn't have a webinar funnel. His funnel was like a quiz funnel, and like people would go through the quiz and he had three different courses, and the the result of your quiz just pointed you to which of the three courses you needed to take. I was like, well, Spencer, there's no value here, right? There's nothing, and it wasn't converting, you know. He teaches uh toddlers to read. That's his brand, toddlers can read. So I mean he's literally teaching like two and three year olds how to read, which is amazing. But um, I mean he's you look him up, he's over two million followers on like Instagram alone, right? Across all the platforms, he's like over five or six million. He was just on Fox News the other day. Uh he's he's wildly successful. Um, but but he implemented a webinar funnel, and his was only 35 minutes. Uh, and he got the job done. By the time you got to the offer, you're like, yes, I can do this. I can help my kid do this in his case. And and this program is the perfect way for me to do it. Um, and he still has that 35-minute webinar and works amazingly well, like six figures a month well.

SPEAKER_01:

Now, if somebody is then thinking, well, how am I driving traffic into this webinar? What's your what's your big picture take on that? Like, what do you think is the the best approach for online course creators to be using around traffic?

SPEAKER_00:

So, I mean, regardless of webinar, right? I mean, the question is how do we drive traffic to to our whatever kind of flammel it is, basically, right? Um in general, I would say YouTube. I mean, I'm a big fan of organic strategies, especially when you're starting out. Like, try to get you know at least five figures a month in sales from just organic before you even think about doing ads. Uh, and then if you're gonna do organic, for most people I still think YouTube is the best way to go. Uh I find that, right?

SPEAKER_01:

And I didn't find that most of our clients were on YouTube whenever I started eight years ago or something, right? But nowadays, nearly all of our clients YouTube is their main platform. Now, some it's Instagram, some, but that it doesn't convert as well to to course sales in terms of you need a lot more followers on Instagram to get the same revenue that you would from long-form views on on YouTube. I got my theories about why that is. Why do you think YouTube is the the one?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's there's a few there's a few reasons. I mean, one, it's wildly popular. There's a lot of there's a lot of users there. Um, but if we're comparing it to other platforms, it's like it's like the sweet spot of the amount of time you can spend with somebody, too, right? So it's if you compare it to Instagram, you would have to watch a lot of 30-second videos to to spend enough time with somebody to really build trust and want to buy something from them, right? So with piano in 21 days, that's always been my top traffic source is my YouTube channel. I don't really know how many, like on average, how many of my videos people are watching before they buy or before they enter my funnel, but but I have a theory it's several, right? They're not just watching one video and then jumping over for the most part. I'm sure some people do. But if you if you watch three videos on on Instagram and then jump over to my funnel, well, you've only spent a couple minutes with me, and so you're not as invested. But if you if you watch three YouTube videos, um, then you're way more invested and way more trust is built up. And so that's why it converts better, right? Um But just I think the data is there that it just works really well for course creators. I mean, you know that in in in your field, I know that. Uh it's just a phenomenal match because people are looking for solutions on a video-based platform, and those same type of person are probably a good fit to have a video-based solution in the form of an online course.

SPEAKER_01:

It's one of the reasons why I think webinars work well as a sales mechanism, because you are showing a video to people, and the kind of people who want to buy video courses are the same kind of people who'd be more likely to watch a video about whether to buy it or not, rather than read a sales page. I'm not saying it's the only reason, but it's like I think that's one of the reasons that it kind of fits, particularly for online courses. And what I think YouTube does as well, like you say. Like, I've I've don't know anybody where Twitter is their main, you know, source of leads. I know one person who's done really well with TikTok. One. And I'm like, I I can't recommend it to anybody, particularly spending a lot of time on on building up your TikTok following when I've when I've only got one person who as a you know example for it. Like maybe, maybe there's real benefits to it. But I've I've seen a lot of people who've got big followings on YouTube and they start doing TikTok and they build up a big following and they just don't make any sales from it. Like, and by not making any sales, I mean they might have a million followers and make 10 sales, you know, in a in a in a whatever, three, six month period, something like that. Like it's it's almost was a complete waste of time. Do you recommend people to focus on discovery-based videos or search-based videos or a mixture of them? Do you find that makes a difference as to how well it kind of converts from the audience over to people who want to buy courses?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think a mixture. I think a mixture is definitely good. Uh search has not gone away completely. When I when I started my YouTube channel in 2013, it was all about search, right? We were we were loading keywords into into into titles, and um, that's that was the name of the game. And then eventually with the algorithm, I mean there was no feed in 2013, but now you open a YouTube app, there's a feed, right? The algorithm is serving you stuff. That that's not how it used to be. So then that became extremely important. Um, but people do still search on YouTube, just not, it's not the only way people find you. So it is good to um to potentially do both, but it depends on if people are actively searching for for your stuff, right? Mine's easy because people are always searching for how to play piano, but sometimes you're in a niche where people don't necessarily know they need it and and you need it to just like pop up in front of them in their feed, you know? So a combination. Um, and sometimes we want to make videos that are more more geared for like our subscribers, um, and just like build that, build up that um the people that are already subscribed to us, build up that community and whatnot. And those are the types of videos where your call to action would probably be like leave a comment below or something like that. Whereas other videos you want to make are more discoverable videos where we want it to the algorithm to really catch on to it and feed it to more people um in in an effort to get more subscribers and get more people to our website.

SPEAKER_01:

Is that do you recommend a mix of both too? You know what? I do not consider myself to be a traffic expert in any way. I only work with people who've already got the traffic side of stuff figured out. I don't recommend shit because I don't know the answer. I'm I'm hoping to find out the answer from you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but look, you have a YouTube channel, right?

SPEAKER_01:

I do, I do. How how many subs do you have? Uh 1,500, something like that. How many? Sorry? About 1,500.

SPEAKER_00:

3,000 people. Okay, awesome. That that works. That works well. But so like you you're doing something right, right? Or do you have someone in your team that just handles it for you?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, so we focus mostly on there, we've focused on discovery. I don't know that we've done an amazing job. We do an okay job, you know, but it's definitely not amazing. Um I spent a while learning and didn't find and and you know, studied thumbnails and titles and made loads of changes and as far it didn't seem to make a massive difference. So uh kind of moved over to different tactics. What I for me, what has worked, and I really want to hear your opinion on this, is the bust. Now most of the videos on YouTube are the podcast episodes, and a lot of people, if they want to hear them, will go and watch them on YouTube. But that's not that doesn't mean that's how they discovered it. Like it's a more middle of funnel tactic, right, rather than rather than being kind of uh top of funnel. I think that's the place with YouTube where we haven't haven't done as well. Now you have a podcast, you put the podcast up on YouTube as well. How do you feel about podcasts? Why do you recommend YouTube versus a podcast to your to your clients?

SPEAKER_00:

Because with YouTube you have that opportunity to like, for lack of a better word, go viral. It's really hard for a podcast episode to go viral.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. That's been that's my kind of uh experience with it. Is like podcasts are fantastic for building trust. You spend more time with someone who listens to your podcast than you do with a YouTube viewer because people will just listen, they'll binge it. People message me and are like, I've listened to every episode twice, and I'm like, oh my god, I need to make more so you don't have to do that, you know. But they're trickier to find. You don't have that top of funnel discovery kind of element to it.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. I mean, you there's a little bit of that, but nowhere near something like something like YouTube, right? Um, so yeah, starting a podcast eight years ago is one of the best things I've ever done in my business. So I'm not I'm not ragging on podcasts, but now we make them, we record the video too, and we put them on YouTube. Uh and you know, none of those do particularly well. Like if if if one of those gets a thousand views, we're happy, you know. But they can be discoverable. I had an episode a few months ago. Do you know who Ali Abdal is? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Big YouTuber, right? 7 million subscribers, something like that. I had a I had a podcast interview that he commented on, and he was like, he said something like sick episode, right? That's all he said. That sounds like Ellie, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so I I saw that comment come through my email. I'm like, wait a second, this isn't this, this can't actually be Ali Abdullah.

SPEAKER_01:

This is someone else that's just put that name, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I yeah, exactly, because yeah, I click on it and then click on click on it again to get to his profile, and it was the real deal. It was the 7 million subscriber Ali Abdullah, it was the real guy. Um, and I was like freaking out because he commented on one of my videos. So I think it just got served to him in his algorithm, and I've gotten plenty of comments like that under those videos where people are like, wow, I just you know, this this video just came across my feed, you know, now I'm subscribing or whatever. Now that's more common on my non-interview based uh videos on YouTube. Mm-hmm. Um you know, it the algorithm is so funny. Let me tell you about this video. I made a video at the very end of last year, uh, because I was I was about to relaunch my my beginner program called Genesis. And I saw I made a video called, like, you know, if I were starting an online course business in 2025, here's what I would do. Right. And, you know, I spent a bunch of time on the thumbnail, the title, the, the, the hook. I just I wanted this to be an amazing video. I'm like, this is gonna really take off. I know the YouTube YouTube algorithm, uh, it's gonna do really well. And the timing is right too. Like, let's start it in the new year. And the video didn't do very well until a couple of months ago. The algorithm to started taking it off a couple of months ago, you know, seven months later. And now, like, it's my top watch video on my channel um day to day, and it's bringing in all kinds of new leads from a from like a video I made almost a year ago now. I that that type of thing I don't get. Like, why did it take seven months for it to start? Like you look at the you look at the analytics, it's like flat, flat, flat, and starts to take off, and it's still doing well today.

SPEAKER_01:

And do you post those videos on the same channel as your your podcasts, episodes?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so I have one channel for piano in 21 days, and then I have one channel for the online course guy. For the online course guy, I post my podcast interviews as well as like one-off videos like that. Like we just the last one we did was a um it's one of those tier list videos. Uh I've been wanting to do that for a while, like tier list for top course platforms, uh, top 20 course platforms ranking from S tier down to F tier.

SPEAKER_01:

I need to find out where I've seen a load of those like in the fitness space, fitness videos. I need to find out when did S become the like stand for when did it come in? Because I've I I'd seen I've seen them a hundred times and never known what the fuck the S is. I'd know it's the best.

SPEAKER_00:

I should ask Chat GPT. It stands, it stands, my understanding is like super. Okay. I could be wrong there. Yeah. But yeah, I've watched like you know, protein powders ranked from S tier to F tier. So finally did the uh the course platform.

SPEAKER_01:

It originated according to the Google AI and overview. So take this with a pinch of salt, people. It stands for special, super or superior, represents the highest possible rank, uh, rooted in Japanese grading, where an S rank uh signifies excellence beyond A, and originated from Japanese video games and academia. So that may or may not be true.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Okay, wait. So I just thought of something, John. You know, we were comparing like YouTube to some other platforms. You know the other great thing about YouTube is the the longevity. I mean, that's probably number one is you know, I'll I'll go back to piano in 21 Days. I have I have one video I made eight years ago that is by far, you know, even today, like the the video on my YouTube channel for piano in 21 days that gets the most views is this video I made eight years ago. It's got about three million views. And I mean, my my business, piano in 21 days, it's brought over brought in over four million dollars. Without that video, I would love to I need to run the math on this because I would venture to say that that one video has brought in at least half of those sales, right? It's wild. I really need to figure out that because um, I mean, even today, that's the top source of traffic and income is people coming from that video. Um, I do track like the analytics of like which YouTube video somebody came from to opt in and then ultimately buy. I just haven't like aggregated that data to know like truly how much the sales were worth. But what I'm saying is like eight years ago, I made that video. Even today, it gets 500 views. I was just looking at yesterday, it gets 500 views per day, which like isn't a crazy amount, but I made it eight years ago. You're not gonna get that on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or whatever. The longevity is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01:

So what's your what's your approach now? Uh, because I saw you you recommend people to do one YouTube video per week. Do you think most people can manage, most course creators can manage that? Do you think that's a realistic kind of schedule?

SPEAKER_00:

With the right systems in place, yeah. Right. My favorite quote, you you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. So it's one thing to say, and that's from the book Atomic Habits, all-time favorite quote. Um, it's one thing to say, I'm gonna post a video every week. It's another thing to set up the systems actually do that, right? Because if you just if you just have this goal without the systems, you're you're not going to you're not gonna hit it. Uh if you do it once a week, I mean that's that's just gold. If you can do it at a high quality, right, the number one most important thing is your thumbnail. Next is your title, next is the first five seconds with your hook, and then next is just like audience retention, audience retention, audience retention throughout the whole video. If you can do all those things well at a once a week cadence, I mean that's a gold mine. Absolute gold mine. I just don't see many people doing that and sticking with it. I haven't. I wish I would have. And that's part of the problem too, with like that video I made eight years ago. It's like I've tried and I can't get anything. Anywhere near as successful. And it's so like, why do I even bother? Like, I'm just gonna sit back, relax, and collect the money from this video eight years ago, which is a terrible attitude. Because um, like I made a video a few years ago about how to play if you have small hands, and there's really the thumbnails of just me like with my my my arms out like this, and my graphic designer made my hands like a third the size, so it's like a really compelling thumbnail. Well, it that actually started taking off in the past like year, right? You just never know really what's gonna do well um or when it's gonna do well. So yeah, what were you gonna say? I think I cut you off.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't know, but what are the systems that you think can help someone to do that to post post once a week? Script writing's gotta be a lot of it, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Uh I mean it starts with ideation, right? If you can't if you can't consistently come up with topic for 52 weeks of the year, then that's a problem. So um, you know, we we have several ways we teach people to just ideate and have a running list going of a potential topic. So when they're when they have the the right energy and mindset to script it out or just like, you know, when I say when when I think the word script, I think like we're writing down every last word, and that's not necessary either, unless you want to do that. Sometimes, you know, I have a teleprompter on the camera I'm looking at right now, and sometimes I will do that if I just want every word dialed in. That's not always necessary. Um, but if you don't have a good list of topics that will work, then it's hard to script something out and then go to the next stage and go to the next stage. So it starts with ideation. Um, and there's a lot of ways to do that. Uh, but I just I keep a running list for both of my businesses of potential ideas, um, and then and then scripting it out. I don't personally like to like script out and record on the same days. I I kind of separate those out. That works, that you know, part of the system works well for me. I just I just really kind of need to be on when I'm ready to record. Um, I'm just in a totally different mindset when I'm like being all nerdy and like scripting out and coming up with ideas versus being ready to be on camera, right? So those are the some of the things. But like another thing that I do that I think is important is usually we'll create the thumbnail before we create the video. Yeah, and if we can't nail the thumbnail, then then we don't move forward with the video. So we start there. I have a graphic designer that's like five hours a week on my team who's been with me for a long time. And so like having like sending him the ideas, created the th thumbnails, right? If you're creating all the thumbnails yourself, it's not ideal unless you are a graphic designer, uh, because it takes time and you're probably not gonna do it very well. So just like having that system for your thumbnail, for coming up with titles, for ideation, for scripting, um, whether that's certain days of the week or you know, blocking off your calendar. Uh, because because getting a high quality YouTube video out every week requires a lot. It's not just something you're gonna you're gonna wing it and succeed with. Um, so at a high level, those are some of the systems. Nice.

SPEAKER_01:

And you said you don't you don't always manage to do that yourself, though?

SPEAKER_00:

No, John. I wish, you know, I just YouTube is so powerful. It's so powerful. The the the the platform that I have been consistent with the most is my podcast, the online course show. And that's that's amazing. But it doesn't, it just and I wouldn't change that. It just doesn't have the opportunity for any of those episodes to just like go wildly crazy with the algorithm, right? And that's the power of YouTube, is that you don't usually know which one it's gonna happen to, but it can, it just it can happen at any any time. So that's why I love the once a week thing, because if you do it well, 52 out of the uh 52 weeks out of the year, then some of those are gonna really pop, you know? Um so no, I've I've spent that consistency on the podcast. I'm trying to get more and more consistent with uh the OCG online course guy YouTube channel, and then piano in 21 days. It's it's hard to run two businesses, right? It's hard to be on two and I haven't actually made a video on that channel in a couple of years, right? Because I like talking about the business stuff more, and because like it does well. It does it does well even even today without posting new videos, but it would just do so much better if I posted once a week.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, to a certain extent, you've got to think about well, what makes your life the life you want to have as well. It's not just about how do you get the maximum amount of money out of business, right? It's like the whole point of starting an online business was to get the life that you wanted, or at least it was for like 99% of people that I know. And then somewhere on the way, it's possible to get caught up in like, oh yeah, but I should do this thing because of money. It's like, well, have you already got enough of that? Because in which case you don't have to do shit, you know?

SPEAKER_00:

Do whatever you like. That's a great point. Bring it it's uh it's real stuff here, John. So I'm glad you brought that up. But it's all I mean, it's not just money, it's impact too, right? Like people are genuinely learning piano that like weren't learning, weren't weren't learning through other methods because I teach piano so so much differently um than other people. And so uh it's just like that means everything to me when I get a message from somebody's like I I was I was ready to give up and I came across the way that you teach, and I'm like, I'm actually playing piano and enjoying it and impressing my you know my wife or whatever, and so um yeah, I've I've done well with it. Uh and I but what I'm saying is I could have made more money, sure, and I could have impacted more people too, which is really, really cool.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm sure you've impacted a lot of people through the online course show and the online course guy as well. So don't discount that. So saying that, if someone wants to someone's been listening to this and it's like, oh, I want to check out some of what Jack's doing, uh, and maybe like because we don't work with people who when they're total beginners, right? When they're just getting started, but you do. Like that's something that you help people to kind of get going from scratch, right? I remember that correctly.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot you don't work with beginners. That you're you're missing out on working with some amazing people, John.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, absolutely. It's just not the skill. Like, I've just got such a limited scope in terms of skill set that I feel like I can. If I every time I try and go further, I'm like, I can't go deeper on this one thing. So our thing is we don't help people make courses, we don't help people drive traffic, we just help with the email marketing and funnels. Once you've got traffic and you've got courses and you've proven that those people will buy those courses. So if someone is listening to this and they're like, Yeah, but I haven't got there yet, then I know they find this stuff useful, but they could actually come and like check out some of the ways that you help people. So could you kind of do a little pitch for um the way that you do that?

SPEAKER_00:

I appreciate that. That's so great that you got so niched down. I, you know, I help people with everything. And I think the reason is is because when I um when I got started, you know, I focused on making the course, but then it didn't sell because I wasn't any good at marketing and sales. And it just took me about three years to figure out all the pieces I needed. And so I just I had so much struggle, but the payoff was so great from all that struggle. Like I want to help people set up all those pieces because of my story, right? So that's that's I think that's kind of wise based on the background. So we have a beginner program called Genesis, right? From the beginning, it's very clever. Genesis courses is is that program.

SPEAKER_01:

Um if you have to tell people it's clever, then it might be too clever.

SPEAKER_00:

That was rude, John. That was rude. Rolling me out like that. Uh anyway, yeah, from the beginning. So yeah, we we there's no there's no prerequisites. I mean, we have people signing up for Genesis that don't don't even know have their topic yet. Like they're all over the place with their topic. So we help them hone that in. Now that's that's more rare. People normally know what their topic is. Um, but yeah, it's a beginner program. I used for anybody that's not making sales, right? So we do have people joining us that have even created their course, but it's not selling, so that might mean their course is terrible and we need to redo their course, or just they just don't have the marketing and sales and systems in place yet. So uh appreciate you. Let me talk about that for a little bit. But yeah, we we do help beginners. Genesis courses. Um, you can find more information about that at at our website, the online courseguy.com.

SPEAKER_01:

Nice. And if you want to listen to the podcast and it's the online course show, you can just search for the online course show on you know Spotify or podcast, whatever podcast app you're using, or you can um go to the onlinecourse guy.com slash podcasts. And uh I've been on uh a couple of weeks ago now, had the chance to go and uh talk to Jack about what I've been up to and and kind of what's working for us and our clients. Uh, but there's some great episodes on there with um a lot of other people that I kind of had a little scoot through and I recognize some names, which is great to kind of see quite a lot of my friends have been on as well, and some of our some of the people who work with us too. So definitely go check that out and go check out the onlinecourseguide.com um if you want if you want help from Jacques with getting uh with getting started. Um anything else you want to to uh link to or let people know about?

SPEAKER_00:

No, John, I mean you these are podcast listeners listening to this, and I'm sure we have some crossover. I'm sure some people listen to both of our podcasts because we're we're probably the top two in the space, if I if I had to guess. Um, but if somebody wasn't familiar with me and my podcast, like don't don't leave John's podcast, come over to mine, like consume all of John's, right? Only come over to mine if you're like, gosh, I'm I've listened to all of John's. I need more, then you can come over to mine because uh we, you know, it's instead of listening to mine twice, come and listen to yours as well. Yeah, don't listen to John twice, listen to it once, and then come over to my podcast. Uh, but it's a it's um, you know, yours is obviously a fantastic podcast. Uh and then the what the latest one you've been on mine was, like you said, just a couple weeks ago, episode 267. So if somebody isn't familiar and they want to dip their toe in the water with my podcast, that'd be a great one to start with because they're familiar with you. And uh it's so I mean it's so different. Like you're you're normally the one interviewing, you're interviewing me right now, um, even though I'm going on all these tangents for you. Uh, but I'm interviewing you, right? So if if people only hear you interviewing other people and they want to learn more about you and and and hear you being interviewed, that'd be a great place to go, is episode 267, um, and and hear me teat you up for questions and see how you answer those.

SPEAKER_01:

Perfect. Shaq, thanks so much for coming on, man. Really, really appreciate your time. Uh, been a great episode. And uh, if you're listening, thank you so much. Really appreciate you. If you have any suggestions of anybody else you would like us to interview on the on the podcast, please drop me an email, John at datadrivenmarketing.co. Um, or go check out uh previous episodes with Jack or the online course show, and we'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks, Jack. Thank you, John.